The Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan

THE SECRETS OF THE PRINCESSE DE CADIGNAN

By Honore De Balzac

Translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley

DEDICATION

To Theophile Gautier

THE SECRETS OF THE PRINCESSE DE CADIGNAN

CHAPTER I. THE LAST WORD OF TWO GREAT COQUETTES

After the disasters of the revolution of July, which destroyed so many

aristocratic fortunes dependent on the court, Madame la Princesse de

Cadignan was clever enough to attribute to political events the total

ruin she had caused by her own extravagance. The prince left France

with the royal family, and never returned to it, leaving the princess in

Paris, protected by the fact of his absence; for their debts, which

the sale of all their salable property had not been able to extinguish,

could only be recovered through him. The revenues of the entailed

estates had been seized. In short, the affairs of this great family were

in as bad a state as those of the elder branch of the Bourbons.

This woman, so celebrated under her first name of Duchesse de

Maufrigneuse, very wisely decided to live in retirement, and to make

herself, if possible, forgotten. Paris was then so carried away by the

whirling current of events that the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse, buried in

the Princesse de Cadignan, a change of name unknown to most of the new

actors brought upon the stage of society by the revolution of July, did

really become a stranger in her own city.

In Paris the title of duke ranks all others, even that of prince;

though, in heraldic theory, free of all sophism, titles signify nothing;

there is absolute equality among gentlemen. This fine equality was

formerly maintained by the House of France itself; and in our day it is

so still, at least, nominally; witness the care with which the kings of

France give to their sons the simple title of count. It was in virtue of

this system that Francois I. crushed the splendid titles assumed by the

pompous Charles the Fifth, by signing his answer: “Francois, seigneur

de Vanves.” Louis XI. did better still by marrying his daughter to

an untitled gentleman, Pierre de Beaujeu. The feudal system was so

thoroughly broken up by Louis XIV. that the title of duke became, during

his reign, the supreme honor of the aristocracy, and the most coveted.

Nevertheless there are two or three families in France in which the

principality, richly endowed in former times, takes precedence of

the duchy. The house of Cadignan, which possesses the title of Duc de

Maufrigneuse for its eldest sons, is one of these exceptional families.

Like the princes of the house of Rohan in earlier days, the princes of

Cadignan had the right to a throne in their own domain; they could have

pages and gentlemen in their service. This explanation is necessary,

as much to escape foolish critics who know nothing, as to record the

customs of a world which, we are told, is about to disappear, and which,

evidently, so many persons are assisting to push away without knowing

what it is.

The Cadignans bear: or, five lozenges sable appointed, placed fess-wise,

with the word “Memini” for motto, a crown with a cap of maintenance,

no supporters or mantle. In these days the great crowd of strangers

flocking to Paris, and the almost universal ignorance of the science of

heraldry, are beginning to bring the title of prince into fashion.

There are no real princes but those possessed of principalities, to whom

belongs the title of highness. The disdain shown by the French nobility

for the title of prince, and the reasons which caused Louis XIV. to give

supremacy to the title of duke, have prevented Frenchmen from claiming

the appellation of “highness” for the few princes who exist in France,

those of Napoleon excepted. This is why the princes of Cadignan hold an

inferior position, nominally, to the princes of the continent.

The members of the society called the faubourg Saint-Germain protected

the princess by a respectful silence due to her name, which is one

of those that all men honor, to her misfortunes, which they ceased to

discuss, and to her beauty, the only thing she saved of her departed

opulence. Society, of which she had once been the ornament, was thankful

to her for having, as it were, taken the veil, and cloistered herself

in her own home. This act of good taste was for her, more than for any

other woman, an immense sacrifice. Great deeds are always so keenly felt

in France that the princess gained, by her retreat, as much as she had

lost in public opinion in the days of her splendor.

She now saw only one of her old friends, the Marquise d’Espard, and even

to her she never went on festive occasions or to parties. The princess

and the marquise visited each other in the forenoons, with a certain

amount of secrecy. When the princess went to dine with her friend,

the marquise closed her doors. Madame d’Espard treated the princess

charmingly; she changed her box at the opera, leaving the first tier for

a baignoire on the ground-floor, so that Madame de Cadignan could come

to the theatre unseen, and depart incognito. Few women would have been

capable of a delicacy which deprived them of the pleasure of bearing in

their train a fallen rival, and of publicly being her benefactress. Thus

relieved of the necessity for costly toilets, the princess could enjoy

the theatre, whither she went in Madame d’Espard’s carriage, which she

would never have accepted openly in the daytime. No one has ever

known Madame d’Espard’s reasons for behaving thus to the Princesse de

Cadignan; but her conduct was admirable, and for a long time included a

number of little acts which, viewed single, seem mere trifles, but taken

in the mass become gigantic.

In 1832, three years had thrown a mantle of snow over the follies and

adventures of the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse, and had whitened them so

thoroughly that it now required a serious effort of memory to recall

them. Of the queen once adored by so many courtiers, and whose follies

might have given a theme to a variety of novels, there remained a woman

still adorably beautiful, thirty-six years of age, but quite justified

in calling herself thirty, although she was the mother of Duc Georges

de Maufrigneuse, a young man of eighteen, handsome as Antinous, poor as

Job, who was expected to obtain great successes, and for whom his mother

desired, above all things, to find a rich wife. Perhaps this hope was

the secret of the intimacy she still kept up with the marquise, in whose

salon, which was one of the first in Paris, she might eventually be able

to choose among many heiresses for Georges’ wife. The princess saw five

years between the present moment and her son’s marriage,--five solitary

and desolate years; for, in order to obtain such a marriage for her

son, she knew that her own conduct must be marked in the corner with

discretion.

The princess lived in the rue de Miromesnil, in a small house, of which

she occupied the ground-floor at a moderate rent. There she made the

most of the relics of her past magnificence. The elegance of the great

lady was still redolent about her. She was still surrounded by beautiful

things which recalled her former existence. On her chimney-piece was a

fine miniature portrait of Charles X., by Madame Mirbel, beneath which

were engraved the words, “Given by the King”; and, as a pendant, the

portrait of “Madame”, who was always her kind friend. On a table lay an

album of costliest price, such as none of the bourgeoises who now lord

it in our industrial and fault-finding society would have dared to

exhibit. This album contained portraits, about thirty in number, of

her intimate friends, whom the world, first and last, had given her as

lovers. The number was a calumny; but had rumor said ten, it might have

been, as her friend Madame d’Espard remarked, good, sound gossip. The

portraits of Maxime de Trailles, de Marsay, Rastignac, the Marquis

d’Esgrignon, General Montriveau, the Marquis de Ronquerolles and

d’Ajuda-Pinto, Prince Galathionne, the young Ducs de Grandlieu and de

Rhetore, the Vicomte de Serizy, and the handsome Lucien de Rubempre,

had all been treated with the utmost coquetry of brush and pencil by

celebrated artists. As the princess now received only two or three of

these personages, she called the book, jokingly, the collection of her

errors.

Misfortune had made this woman a good mother. During the fifteen years

of the Restoration she had amused herself far too much to think of

her son; but on taking refuge in obscurity, this illustrious egoist

bethought her that the maternal sentiment, developed to its extreme,

might be an absolution for her past follies in the eyes of sensible

persons, who pardon everything to a good mother. She loved her son all

the more because she had nothing else to love. Georges de Maufrigneuse

was, moreover, one of those children who flatter the vanities of a

mother; and the princess had, accordingly, made all sorts of sacrifices

for him. She hired a stable and coach-house, above which he lived in a

little entresol with three rooms looking on the street, and charmingly

furnished; she had even borne several privations to keep a saddle-horse,

a cab-horse, and a little groom for his use. For herself, she had only

her own maid, and as cook, a former kitchen-maid. The duke’s groom

had, therefore, rather a hard place. Toby, formerly tiger to the “late”

Beaudenord (such was the jesting term applied by the gay world to that

ruined gentleman),--Toby, who at twenty-five years of age was still

considered only fourteen, was expected to groom the horses, clean the

cabriolet, or the tilbury, and the harnesses, accompany his master, take

care of the apartments, and be in the princess’s antechamber to announce

a visitor, if, by chance, she happened to receive one.

When one thinks of what the beautiful Duchesse de Maufrigneuse had been

under the Restoration,--one of the queens of Paris, a dazzling queen,

whose luxurious existence equalled that of the richest women of fashion

in London,--there was something touching in the sight of her in that

humble little abode in the rue de Miromesnil, a few steps away from her

splendid mansion, which no amount of fortune had enabled her to keep,

and which the hammer of speculators has since demolished. The woman who

thought she was scarcely well served by thirty servants, who possessed

the most beautiful reception-rooms in all Paris, and the loveliest

little private apartments, and who made them the scene of such

delightful fetes, now lived in a small apartment of five rooms,--an

antechamber, dining-room, salon, one bed-chamber, and a dressing-room,

with two women-servants only.

“Ah! she is devoted to her son,” said that clever creature, Madame

d’Espard, “and devoted without ostentation; she is happy. Who would

ever have believed so frivolous a woman was capable of such persistent

resolution! Our good archbishop has, consequently, greatly encouraged

her; he is most kind to her, and has just induced the old Comtesse de

Cinq-Cygne to pay her a visit.”

Let us admit a truth! One must be a queen to know how to abdicate, and

to descend with dignity from a lofty position which is never wholly

lost. Those only who have an inner consciousness of being nothing in

themselves, show regrets in falling, or struggle, murmuring, to return

to a past which can never return,--a fact of which they themselves are

well aware. Compelled to do without the choice exotics in the midst of

which she had lived, and which set off so charmingly her whole being

(for it is impossible not to compare her to a flower), the princess

had wisely chosen a ground-floor apartment; there she enjoyed a pretty

little garden which belonged to it,--a garden full of shrubs, and an

always verdant turf, which brightened her peaceful retreat. She had

about twelve thousand francs a year; but that modest income was partly

made up of an annual stipend sent her by the old Duchesse de Navarreins,

paternal aunt of the young duke, and another stipend given by her

mother, the Duchesse d’Uxelles, who was living on her estate in the

country, where she economized as old duchesses alone know how to

economize; for Harpagon is a mere novice compared to them. The princess

still retained some of her past relations with the exiled royal family;

and it was in her house that the marshal to whom we owe the conquest of

Africa had conferences, at the time of “Madame’s” attempt in La Vendee,

with the principal leaders of legitimist opinion,--so great was the

obscurity in which the princess lived, and so little distrust did the

government feel for her in her present distress.

Beholding the approach of that terrible fortieth year, the bankruptcy of

love, beyond which there is so little for a woman as woman, the princess

had flung herself into the kingdom of philosophy. She took to reading,

she who for sixteen years had felt a cordial horror for serious things.

Literature and politics are to-day what piety and devotion once were

to her sex,--the last refuge of their feminine pretensions. In her

late social circle it was said that Diane was writing a book. Since

her transformation from a queen and beauty to a woman of intellect, the

princess had contrived to make a reception in her little house a great

honor which distinguished the favored person. Sheltered by her supposed

occupation, she was able to deceive one of her former adorers, de

Marsay, the most influential personage of the political bourgeoisie

brought to the fore in July 1830. She received him sometimes in the

evenings, and, occupied his attention while the marshal and a few

legitimists were talking, in a low voice, in her bedroom, about

the recovery of power, which could be attained only by a general

co-operation of ideas,--the one element of success which all

conspirators overlook. It was the clever vengeance of the pretty woman,

who thus inveigled the prime minister, and made him act as screen for a

conspiracy against his own government.

This adventure, worthy of the finest days of the Fronde, was the text

of a very witty letter, in which the princess rendered to “Madame” an

account of the negotiations. The Duc de Maufrigneuse went to La Vendee,

and was able to return secretly without being compromised, but not

without taking part in “Madame’s” perils; the latter, however, sent

him home the moment she saw that her cause was lost. Perhaps, had he

remained, the eager vigilance of the young man might have foiled that

treachery. However great the faults of the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse may

have seemed in the eyes of the bourgeoisie, the behavior of her son on

this occasion certainly effaced them in the eyes of the aristocracy.

There was great nobility and grandeur in thus risking her only son, and

the heir of an historic name. Some persons are said to intentionally

cover the faults of their private life by public services, and vice

versa; but the Princesse de Cadignan made no such calculation. Possibly

those who apparently so conduct themselves make none. Events count for

much in such cases.

On one of the first fine days in the month of May, 1833, the Marquise

d’Espard and the princess were turning about--one could hardly call

it walking--in the single path which wound round the grass-plat in

the garden, about half-past two in the afternoon, just as the sun was

leaving it. The rays reflected on the walls gave a warm atmosphere

to the little space, which was fragrant with flowers, the gift of the

marquise.

“We shall soon lose de Marsay,” said the marquise; “and with him will

disappear your last hope of fortune for your son. Ever since you played

him that clever trick, he has returned to his affection for you.”

“My son will never capitulate to the younger branch,” returned the

princess, “if he has to die of hunger, or I have to work with my hands

to feed him. Besides, Berthe de Cinq-Cygne has no aversion to him.”

“Children don’t bind themselves to their parents’ principles,” said

Madame d’Espard.

“Don’t let us talk about it,” said the princess. “If I can’t coax over

the Marquise de Cinq-Cygne, I shall marry Georges to the daughter of

some iron-founderer, as that little d’Esgrignon did.”

“Did you love Victurnien?” asked the marquise.

“No,” replied the princess, gravely, “d’Esgrignon’s simplicity was

really only a sort of provincial silliness, which I perceived rather too

late--or, if you choose, too soon.”

“And de Marsay?”

“De Marsay played with me as if I were a doll. I was so young at the

time! We never love men who pretend to teach us; they rub up all our

little vanities.”

“And that wretched boy who hanged himself?”

“Lucien? An Antinous and a great poet. I worshiped him in all

conscience, and I might have been happy. But he was in love with a girl

of the town; and I gave him up to Madame de Serizy.... If he had cared

to love me, should I have given him up?”

“What an odd thing, that you should come into collision with an Esther!”

“She was handsomer than I,” said the Princess.--“Very soon it shall be

three years that I have lived in solitude,” she resumed, after a pause,

“and this tranquillity has nothing painful to me about it. To you

alone can I dare to say that I feel I am happy. I was surfeited with

adoration, weary of pleasure, emotional on the surface of things, but

conscious that emotion itself never reached my heart. I have found all

the men whom I have known petty, paltry, superficial; none of them ever

caused me a surprise; they had no innocence, no grandeur, no delicacy. I

wish I could have met with one man able to inspire me with respect.”

“Then are you like me, my dear?” asked the marquise; “have you never

felt the emotion of love while trying to love?”

“Never,” replied the princess, laying her hand on the arm of her friend.

They turned and seated themselves on a rustic bench beneath a jasmine

then coming into flower. Each had uttered one of those sayings that are

solemn to women who have reached their age.

“Like you,” resumed the princess, “I have received more love than most

women; but through all my many adventures, I have never found happiness.

I committed great follies, but they had an object, and that object

retreated as fast as I approached it. I feel to-day in my heart, old

as it is, an innocence which has never been touched. Yes, under all my

experience, lies a first love intact,--just as I myself, in spite of all

my losses and fatigues, feel young and beautiful. We may love and not

be happy; we may be happy and never love; but to love and be happy, to

unite those two immense human experiences, is a miracle. That miracle

has not taken place for me.”

“Nor for me,” said Madame d’Espard.

“I own I am pursued in this retreat by dreadful regret: I have amused

myself all through life, but I have never loved.”

“What an incredible secret!” cried the marquise.

“Ah! my dear,” replied the princess, “such secrets we can tell to

ourselves, you and I, but nobody in Paris would believe us.”

“And,” said the marquise, “if we were not both over thirty-six years of

age, perhaps we would not tell them to each other.”

“Yes; when women are young they have so many stupid conceits,” replied

the princess. “We are like those poor young men who play with a

toothpick to pretend they have dined.”

“Well, at any rate, here we are!” said Madame d’Espard, with coquettish

grace, and a charming gesture of well-informed innocence; “and, it seems

to me, sufficiently alive to think of taking our revenge.”

“When you told me, the other day, that Beatrix had gone off with Conti,

I thought of it all night long,” said the princess, after a pause. “I

suppose there was happiness in sacrificing her position, her future, and

renouncing society forever.”

“She was a little fool,” said Madame d’Espard, gravely. “Mademoiselle

des Touches was delighted to get rid of Conti. Beatrix never perceived

how that surrender, made by a superior woman who never for a moment

defended her claims, proved Conti’s nothingness.”

“Then you think she will be unhappy?”

“She is so now,” replied Madame d’Espard. “Why did she leave her

husband? What an acknowledgment of weakness!”

“Then you think that Madame de Rochefide was not influenced by the

desire to enjoy a true love in peace?” asked the princess.

“No; she was simply imitating Madame de Beausant and Madame de Langeais,

who, be it said, between you and me, would have been, in a less vulgar

period than ours, the La Villiere, the Diane de Poitiers, the Gabrielle

d’Estrees of history.”

“Less the king, my dear. Ah! I wish I could evoke the shades of those

women, and ask them--”

“But,” said the marquise, interrupting the princess, “why ask the dead?

We know living women who have been happy. I have talked on this very

subject a score of times with Madame de Montcornet since she married

that little Emile Blondet, who makes her the happiest woman in the

world; not an infidelity, not a thought that turns aside from her; they

are as happy as they were the first day. These long attachments, like

that of Rastignac and Madame de Nucingen, and your cousin, Madame de

Camps, for her Octave, have a secret, and that secret you and I don’t

know, my dear. The world has paid us the extreme compliment of thinking

we are two rakes worthy of the court of the regent; whereas we are, in

truth, as innocent as a couple of school-girls.”

“I should like that sort of innocence,” cried the princess, laughing;

“but ours is worse, and it is very humiliating. Well, it is a

mortification we offer up in expiation of our fruitless search; yes,

my dear, fruitless, for it isn’t probable we shall find in our autumn

season the fine flower we missed in the spring and summer.”

“That’s not the question,” resumed the marquise, after a meditative

pause. “We are both still beautiful enough to inspire love, but we could

never convince any one of our innocence and virtue.”

“If it were a lie, how easy to dress it up with commentaries, and

serve it as some delicious fruit to be eagerly swallowed! But how is

it possible to get a truth believed? Ah! the greatest of men have been

mistaken there!” added the princess, with one of those meaning smiles

which the pencil of Leonardo da Vinci alone has rendered.

“Fools love well, sometimes,” returned the marquise.

“But in this case,” said the princess, “fools wouldn’t have enough

credulity in their nature.”

“You are right,” said the marquise. “But what we ought to look for is

neither a fool nor even a man of talent. To solve our problem we need a

man of genius. Genius alone has the faith of childhood, the religion of

love, and willingly allows us to band its eyes. Look at Canalis and the

Duchesse de Chaulieu! Though we have both encountered men of genius,

they were either too far removed from us or too busy, and we too

absorbed, too frivolous.”

“Ah! how I wish I might not leave this world without knowing the

happiness of true love,” exclaimed the princess.

“It is nothing to inspire it,” said Madame d’Espard; “the thing is to

feel it. I see many women who are only the pretext for a passion without

being both its cause and its effect.”

“The last love I inspired was a beautiful and sacred thing,” said the

princess. “It had a future in it. Chance had brought me, for once in a

way, the man of genius who is due to us, and yet so difficult to obtain;

there are more pretty women than men of genius. But the devil interfered

with the affair.”

“Tell me about it, my dear; this is all news to me.”

“I first noticed this beautiful passion about the middle of the winter

of 1829. Every Friday, at the opera, I observed a young man, about

thirty years of age, in the orchestra stalls, who evidently came there

for me. He was always in the same stall, gazing at me with eyes of fire,

but, seemingly, saddened by the distance between us, perhaps by the

hopelessness of reaching me.”

“Poor fellow! When a man loves he becomes eminently stupid,” said the

marquise.

“Between every act he would slip into the corridor,” continued the

princess, smiling at her friend’s epigrammatic remark. “Once or twice,

either to see me or to make me see him, he looked through the glass

sash of the box exactly opposite to mine. If I received a visit, I was

certain to see him in the corridor close to my door, casting a furtive

glance upon me. He had apparently learned to know the persons belonging

to my circle; and he followed them when he saw them turning in the

direction of my box, in order to obtain the benefit of the opening door.

I also found my mysterious adorer at the Italian opera-house; there he

had a stall directly opposite to my box, where he could gaze at me in

naive ecstasy--oh! it was pretty! On leaving either house I always found

him planted in the lobby, motionless; he was elbowed and jostled, but

he never moved. His eyes grew less brilliant if he saw me on the arm of

some favorite. But not a word, not a letter, no demonstration. You must

acknowledge that was in good taste. Sometimes, on getting home late

at night, I found him sitting upon one of the stone posts of the

porte-cochere. This lover of mine had very handsome eyes, a long, thick,

fan-shaped beard, with a moustache and side-whiskers; nothing could be

seen of his skin but his white cheek-bones, and a noble forehead; it was

truly an antique head. The prince, as you know, defended the Tuileries

on the riverside, during the July days. He returned to Saint-Cloud that

night, when all was lost, and said to me: ‘I came near being killed at

four o’clock. I was aimed at by one of the insurgents, when a young

man, with a long beard, whom I have often seen at the opera, and who was

leading the attack, threw up the man’s gun, and saved me.’ So my adorer

was evidently a republican! In 1831, after I came to lodge in this

house, I found him, one day, leaning with his back against the wall of

it; he seemed pleased with my disasters; possibly he may have thought

they drew us nearer together. But after the affair of Saint-Merri I

saw him no more; he was killed there. The evening before the funeral of

General Lamarque, I had gone out on foot with my son, and my republican

accompanied us, sometimes behind, sometimes in front, from the Madeleine

to the Passage des Panoramas, where I was going.”

“Is that all?” asked the marquise.

“Yes, all,” replied the princess. “Except that on the morning

Saint-Merri was taken, a gamin came here and insisted on seeing me. He

gave me a letter, written on common paper, signed by my republican.”

“Show it to me,” said the marquise.

“No, my dear. Love was too great and too sacred in the heart of that

man to let me violate its secrets. The letter, short and terrible, still

stirs my soul when I think of it. That dead man gives me more emotions

than all the living men I ever coquetted with; he constantly recurs to

my mind.”

“What was his name?” asked the marquise.

“Oh! a very common one: Michel Chrestien.”

“You have done well to tell me,” said Madame d’Espard, eagerly. “I have

often heard of him. This Michel Chrestien was the intimate friend of

a remarkable man you have already expressed a wish to see,--Daniel

d’Arthez, who comes to my house some two or three times a year.

Chrestien, who was really killed at Saint-Merri, had no lack of friends.

I have heard it said that he was one of those born statesmen to whom,

like de Marsay, nothing is wanting but opportunity to become all they

might be.”

“Then he had better be dead,” said the princess, with a melancholy air,

under which she concealed her thoughts.

“Will you come to my house some evening and meet d’Arthez?” said the

marquise. “You can talk of your ghost.”

“Yes, I will,” replied the princess.

CHAPTER II. DANIEL D’ARTHEZ

A few days after this conversation Blondet and Rastignac, who knew

d’Arthez, promised Madame d’Espard that they would bring him to dine

with her. This promise might have proved rash had it not been for

the name of the princess, a meeting with whom was not a matter of

indifference to the great writer.

Daniel d’Arthez, one of the rare men who, in our day, unite a noble

character with great talent, had already obtained, not all the

popularity his works deserve, but a respectful esteem to which souls

of his own calibre could add nothing. His reputation will certainly

increase; but in the eyes of connoisseurs it had already attained its

full development. He is one of those authors who, sooner or later, are

put in their right place, and never lose it. A poor nobleman, he had

understood his epoch well enough to seek personal distinction only. He

had struggled long in the Parisian arena, against the wishes of a rich

uncle who, by a contradiction which vanity must explain, after leaving

his nephew a prey to the utmost penury, bequeathed to the man who had

reached celebrity the fortune so pitilessly refused to the unknown

writer. This sudden change in his position made no change in Daniel

d’Arthez’s habits; he continued to work with a simplicity worthy of

the antique past, and even assumed new toils by accepting a seat in the

Chamber of Deputies, where he took his seat on the Right.

Since his accession to fame he had sometimes gone into society. One of

his old friends, the now-famous physician, Horace Bianchon, persuaded

him to make the acquaintance of the Baron de Rastignac, under-secretary

of State, and a friend of de Marsay, the prime minister. These two

political officials acquiesced, rather nobly, in the strong wish of

d’Arthez, Bianchon, and other friends of Michel Chrestien for the

removal of the body of that republican to the church of Saint-Merri for

the purpose of giving it funeral honors. Gratitude for a service which

contrasted with the administrative rigor displayed at a time when

political passions were so violent, had bound, so to speak, d’Arthez to

Rastignac. The latter and de Marsay were much too clever not to profit

by that circumstance; and thus they won over other friends of Michel

Chrestien, who did not share his political opinions, and who now

attached themselves to the new government. One of them, Leon Giraud,

appointed in the first instance master of petitions, became eventually a

Councillor of State.

The whole existence of Daniel d’Arthez is consecrated to work; he sees

society only by snatches; it is to him a sort of dream. His house is a

convent, where he leads the life of a Benedictine; the same sobriety of

regimen, the same regularity of occupation. His friends knew that up to

the present time woman had been to him no more than an always dreaded

circumstance; he had observed her too much not to fear her; but by dint

of studying her he had ceased to understand her,--like, in this, to

those deep strategists who are always beaten on unexpected ground,

where their scientific axioms are either modified or contradicted. In

character he still remains a simple-hearted child, all the while

proving himself an observer of the first rank. This contrast, apparently

impossible, is explainable to those who know how to measure the depths

which separate faculties from feelings; the former proceed from the

head, the latter from the heart. A man can be a great man and a wicked

one, just as he can be a fool and a devoted lover. D’Arthez is one of

those privileged beings in whom shrewdness of mind and a broad expanse

of the qualities of the brain do not exclude either the strength or

the grandeur of sentiments. He is, by rare privilege, equally a man of

action and a man of thought. His private life is noble and generous. If

he carefully avoided love, it was because he knew himself, and felt a

premonition of the empire such a passion would exercise upon him.

For several years the crushing toil by which he prepared the solid

ground of his subsequent works, and the chill of poverty, were

marvellous preservatives. But when ease with his inherited fortune came

to him, he formed a vulgar and most incomprehensible connection with a

rather handsome woman, belonging to the lower classes, without education

or manners, whom he carefully concealed from every eye. Michel Chrestien

attributed to men of genius the power of transforming the most

massive creatures into sylphs, fools into clever women, peasants into

countesses; the more accomplished a woman was, the more she lost her

value in their eyes, for, according to Michel, their imagination had the

less to do. In his opinion love, a mere matter of the senses to inferior

beings, was to great souls the most immense of all moral creations

and the most binding. To justify d’Arthez, he instanced the example of

Raffaele and the Fornarina. He might have offered himself as an

instance for this theory, he who had seen an angel in the Duchesse

de Maufrigneuse. This strange fancy of d’Arthez might, however, be

explained in other ways; perhaps he had despaired of meeting here below

with a woman who answered to that delightful vision which all men of

intellect dream of and cherish; perhaps his heart was too sensitive, too

delicate, to yield itself to a woman of society; perhaps he thought best

to let nature have her way, and keep his illusions by cultivating his

ideal; perhaps he had laid aside love as being incompatible with his

work and the regularity of a monastic life which love would have wholly

upset.

For several months past d’Arthez had been subjected to the jests and

satire of Blondet and Rastignac, who reproached him with knowing neither

the world nor women. According to them, his authorship was sufficiently

advanced, and his works numerous enough, to allow him a few

distractions; he had a fine fortune, and here he was living like a

student; he enjoyed nothing,--neither his money nor his fame; he was

ignorant of the exquisite enjoyments of the noble and delicate love

which well-born and well-bred women could inspire and feel; he knew

nothing of the charming refinements of language, nothing of the proofs

of affection incessantly given by refined women to the commonest things.

He might, perhaps, know woman; but he knew nothing of the divinity.

Why not take his rightful place in the world, and taste the delights of

Parisian society?

“Why doesn’t a man who bears party per bend gules and or, a bezant and

crab counterchanged,” cried Rastignac, “display that ancient escutcheon

of Picardy on the panels of a carriage? You have thirty thousand francs

a year, and the proceeds of your pen; you have justified your motto:

Ars thesaurusque virtus, that punning device our ancestors were always

seeking, and yet you never appear in the Bois de Boulogne! We live in

times when virtue ought to show itself.”

“If you read your works to that species of stout Laforet, whom you seem

to fancy, I would forgive you,” said Blondet. “But, my dear fellow, you

are living on dry bread, materially speaking; in the matter of intellect

you haven’t even bread.”

This friendly little warfare had been going on for several months

between Daniel and his friends, when Madame d’Espard asked Rastignac and

Blondet to induce d’Arthez to come and dine with her, telling them that

the Princesse de Cadignan had a great desire to see that celebrated

man. Such curiosities are to certain women what magic lanterns are

to children,--a pleasure to the eyes, but rather shallow and full

of disappointments. The more sentiments a man of talent excites at

a distance, the less he responds to them on nearer view; the more

brilliant fancy has pictured him, the duller he will seem in reality.

Consequently, disenchanted curiosity is often unjust.

Neither Blondet nor Rastignac could deceive d’Arthez; but they told

him, laughing, that they now offered him a most seductive opportunity

to polish up his heart and know the supreme fascinations which love

conferred on a Parisian great lady. The princess was evidently in love

with him; he had nothing to fear but everything to gain by accepting the

interview; it was quite impossible he could descend from the pedestal on

which madame de Cadignan had placed him. Neither Blondet nor Rastignac

saw any impropriety in attributing this love to the princess; she whose

past had given rise to so many anecdotes could very well stand that

lesser calumny. Together they began to relate to d’Arthez the adventures

of the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse: her first affair with de Marsay; her

second with d’Ajuda, whom she had, they said, distracted from his wife,

thus avenging Madame de Beausant; also her later connection with young

d’Esgrignon, who had travelled with her in Italy, and had horribly

compromised himself on her account; after that they told him how unhappy

she had been with a certain celebrated ambassador, how happy with a

Russian general, besides becoming the Egeria of two ministers of Foreign

affairs, and various other anecdotes. D’Arthez replied that he knew a

great deal more than they could tell him about her through their poor

friend, Michel Chrestien, who adored her secretly for four years, and

had well-nigh gone mad about her.

“I have often accompanied him,” said Daniel, “to the opera. He would

make me run through the streets as far as her horses that he might see

the princess through the window of her coupe.”

“Well, there you have a topic all ready for you,” said Blondet, smiling.

“This is the very woman you need; she’ll initiate you most gracefully

into the mysteries of elegance; but take care! she has wasted many

fortunes. The beautiful Diane is one of those spendthrifts who don’t

cost a penny, but for whom a man spends millions. Give yourself up to

her, body and soul, if you choose; but keep your money in your hand,

like the old fellow in Girodet’s ‘Deluge.’”

From the tenor of these remarks it was to be inferred that the princess

had the depth of a precipice, the grace of a queen, the corruption

of diplomatists, the mystery of a first initiation, and the dangerous

qualities of a siren. The two clever men of the world, incapable of

foreseeing the denouement of their joke, succeeded in presenting Diane

d’Uxelles as a consummate specimen of the Parisian woman, the cleverest

of coquettes, the most enchanting mistress in the world. Right or wrong,

the woman whom they thus treated so lightly was sacred to d’Arthez; his

desire to meet her needed no spur; he consented to do so at the first

word, which was all the two friends wanted of him.

Madame d’Espard went to see the princess as soon as she had received

this answer.

“My dear, do you feel yourself in full beauty and coquetry?” she said.

“If so, come and dine with me a few days hence, and I’ll serve up

d’Arthez. Our man of genius is by nature, it seems, a savage; he

fears women, and has never loved! Make your plans on that. He is

all intellect, and so simple that he’ll mislead you into feeling no

distrust. But his penetration, which is wholly retrospective, acts

later, and frustrates calculation. You may hoodwink him to-day, but

to-morrow nothing can dupe him.”

“Ah!” cried the princess, “if I were only thirty years old what

amusement I might have with him! The one enjoyment I have lacked up to

the present is a man of intellect to fool. I have had only partners,

never adversaries. Love was a mere game instead of being a battle.”

“Dear princess, admit that I am very generous; for, after all, you

know!--charity begins at home.”

The two women looked at each other, laughing, and clasped hands in a

friendly way. Assuredly they both knew each other’s secrets, and this

was not the first man nor the first service that one had given to the

other; for sincere and lasting friendships between women of the world

need to be cemented by a few little crimes. When two friends are liable

to kill each other reciprocally, and see a poisoned dagger in each

other’s hand, they present a touching spectacle of harmony, which is

never troubled, unless, by chance, one of them is careless enough to

drop her weapon.

So, eight days later, a little dinner such as are given to intimates by

verbal invitation only, during which the doors are closed to all other

visitors, took place at Madame d’Espard’s house. Five persons were

invited,--Emile Blondet and Madame de Montcornet, Daniel d’Arthez,

Rastignac, and the Princesse de Cadignan. Counting the mistress of the

house, there were as many men as women.

Chance never exerted itself to make wiser preparations than those which

opened the way to a meeting between d’Arthez and Madame de Cadignan.

The princess is still considered one of the chief authorities on dress,

which, to women, is the first of arts. On this occasion she wore a gown

of blue velvet with flowing white sleeves, and a tulle guimpe, slightly

frilled and edged with blue, covering the shoulders, and rising nearly

to the throat, as we see in several of Raffaele’s portraits. Her maid

had dressed her hair with white heather, adroitly placed among its blond

cascades, which were one of the great beauties to which she owed her

celebrity.

Certainly Diane did not look to be more than twenty-five years old.

Four years of solitude and repose had restored the freshness of her

complexion. Besides, there are moments when the desire to please gives

an increase of beauty to women. The will is not without influence on the

variations of the face. If violent emotions have the power to yellow

the white tones of persons of bilious and melancholy temperament, and to

green lymphatic faces, shall we not grant to desire, hope, and joy,

the faculty of clearing the skin, giving brilliancy to the eye, and

brightening the glow of beauty with a light as jocund as that of a

lovely morning? The celebrated faintness of the princess had taken on

a ripeness which now made her seem more august. At this moment of her

life, impressed by her many vicissitudes and by serious reflections,

her noble, dreamy brow harmonized delightfully with the slow, majestic

glance of her blue eyes. It was impossible for the ablest physiognomist

to imagine calculation or self-will beneath that unspeakable delicacy of

feature. There were faces of women which deceive knowledge, and mislead

observation by their calmness and delicacy; it is necessary to examine

such faces when passions speak, and that is difficult, or after they

have spoken, which is no longer of any use, for then the woman is old

and has ceased to dissimulate.

The princess is one of those impenetrable women; she can make herself

what she pleases to be: playful, childlike, distractingly innocent; or

reflective, serious, and profound enough to excite anxiety. She came to

Madame d’Espard’s dinner with the intention of being a gentle, simple

woman, to whom life was known only through its deceptions: a woman full

of soul, and calumniated, but resigned,--in short, a wounded angel.

She arrived early, so as to pose on a sofa near the fire beside Madame

d’Espard, as she wished to be first seen: that is, in one of

those attitudes in which science is concealed beneath an exquisite

naturalness; a studied attitude, putting in relief the beautiful

serpentine outline which, starting from the foot, rises gracefully to

the hip, and continues with adorable curves to the shoulder, presenting,

in fact, a profile of the whole body. With a subtlety which few women

would have dreamed of, Diane, to the great amazement of the marquise,

had brought her son with her. After a moment’s reflection, Madame

d’Espard pressed the princess’s hand, with a look of intelligence that

seemed to say:--

“I understand you! By making d’Arthez accept all the difficulties at

once you will not have to conquer them later.”

Rastignac brought d’Arthez. The princess made none of those compliments

to the celebrated author with which vulgar persons overwhelmed him; but

she treated him with a kindness full of graceful respect, which, with

her, was the utmost extent of her concessions. Her manner was doubtless

the same with the King of France and the royal princes. She seemed happy

to see this great man, and glad that she had sought him. Persons of

taste, like the princess, are especially distinguished for their manner

of listening, for an affability without superciliousness, which is to

politeness what practice is to virtue. When the celebrated man spoke,

she took an attentive attitude, a thousand times more flattering than

the best-seasoned compliments. The mutual presentation was made quietly,

without emphasis, and in perfectly good taste, by the marquise.

At dinner d’Arthez was placed beside the princess, who, far from

imitating the eccentricities of diet which many affected women display,

ate her dinner with a very good appetite, making it a point of honor

to seem a natural woman, without strange ways or fancies. Between two

courses she took advantage of the conversation becoming general to say

to d’Arthez, in a sort of aside:--

“The secret of the pleasure I take in finding myself beside you, is

the desire I feel to learn something of an unfortunate friend of yours,

monsieur. He died for another cause greater than ours; but I was under

the greatest obligations to him, although unable to acknowledge or thank

him for them. I know that you were one of his best friends. Your mutual

friendship, pure and unalterable, is a claim upon me. You will not, I am

sure, think it extraordinary, that I have wished to know all you could

tell me of a man so dear to you. Though I am attached to the exiled

family, and bound, of course, to hold monarchical opinions, I am not

among those who think it is impossible to be both republican and noble

in heart. Monarchy and the republic are two forms of government which do

not stifle noble sentiments.”

“Michel Chrestien was an angel, madame,” replied Daniel, in a voice of

emotion. “I don’t know among the heroes of antiquity a greater than he.

Be careful not to think him one of those narrow-minded republicans who

would like to restore the Convention and the amenities of the Committee

of Public Safety. No, Michel dreamed of the Swiss federation applied

to all Europe. Let us own, between ourselves, that _after_ the glorious

government of one man only, which, as I think, is particularly suited to

our nation, Michel’s system would lead to the suppression of war in this

old world, and its reconstruction on bases other than those of conquest,

which formerly feudalized it. From this point of view the republicans

came nearest to his idea. That is why he lent them his arm in July, and

was killed at Saint-Merri. Though completely apart in opinion, he and I

were closely bound together as friends.”

“That is noble praise for both natures,” said Madame de Cadignan,

timidly.

“During the last four years of his life,” continued Daniel, “he made to

me alone a confidence of his love for you, and this confidence knitted

closer than ever the already strong ties of brotherly affection. He

alone, madame, can have loved you as you ought to be loved. Many a time

I have been pelted with rain as we accompanied your carriage at the pace

of the horses, to keep at a parallel distance, and see you--admire you.”

“Ah! monsieur,” said the princess, “how can I repay such feelings!”

“Why is Michel not here!” exclaimed Daniel, in melancholy accents.

“Perhaps he would not have loved me long,” said the princess, shaking

her head sadly. “Republicans are more absolute in their ideas than we

absolutists, whose fault is indulgence. No doubt he imagined me perfect,

and society would have cruelly undeceived him. We are pursued, we women,

by as many calumnies as you authors are compelled to endure in your

literary life; but we, alas! cannot defend ourselves either by our works

or by our fame. The world will not believe us to be what we are, but

what it thinks us to be. It would soon have hidden from his eyes the

real but unknown woman that is in me, behind the false portrait of the

imaginary woman which the world considers true. He would have come to

think me unworthy of the noble feelings he had for me, and incapable of

comprehending him.”

Here the princess shook her head, swaying the beautiful blond curls,

full of heather, with a touching gesture. This plaintive expression of

grievous doubts and hidden sorrows is indescribable. Daniel understood

them all; and he looked at the princess with keen emotion.

“And yet, the night on which I last saw him, after the revolution of

July, I was on the point of giving way to the desire I felt to take

his hand and press it before all the world, under the peristyle of the

opera-house. But the thought came to me that such a proof of gratitude

might be misinterpreted; like so many other little things done

from noble motives which are called to-day the follies of Madame de

Maufrigneuse--things which I can never explain, for none but my son and

God have understood me.”

These words, breathed into the ear of the listener, in tones inaudible

to the other guests, and with accents worthy of the cleverest actress,

were calculated to reach the heart; and they did reach that of d’Arthez.

There was no question of himself in the matter; this woman was seeking

to rehabilitate herself in favor of the dead. She had been calumniated;

and she evidently wanted to know if anything had tarnished her in the

eyes of him who had loved her; had he died with all his illusions?

“Michel,” replied d’Arthez, “was one of those men who love absolutely,

and who, if they choose ill, can suffer without renouncing the woman

they have once elected.”

“Was I loved thus?” she said, with an air of exalted beatitude.

“Yes, madame.”

“I made his happiness?”

“For four years.”

“A woman never hears of such a thing without a sentiment of proud

satisfaction,” she said, turning her sweet and noble face to d’Arthez

with a movement full of modest confusion.

One of the most skilful manoeuvres of these actresses is to veil their

manner when words are too expressive, and speak with their eyes when

language is restrained. These clever discords, slipped into the music of

their love, be it false or true, produce irresistible attractions.

“Is it not,” she said, lowering her voice and her eyes, after feeling

well assured they had produced her effect,--“is it not fulfilling one’s

destiny to have rendered a great man happy?”

“Did he not write that to you?”

“Yes; but I wanted to be sure, quite sure; for, believe me, monsieur, in

putting me so high he was not mistaken.”

Women know how to give a peculiar sacredness to their words; they

communicate something vibrant to them, which extends the meaning

of their ideas, and gives them depth; though later their fascinated

listener may not remember precisely what they said, their end has been

completely attained,--which is the object of all eloquence. The princess

might at that moment have been wearing the diadem of France, and her

brow could not have seemed more imposing than it was beneath that crown

of golden hair, braided like a coronet, and adorned with heather. She

was simple and calm; nothing betrayed a sense of any necessity to appear

so, nor any desire to seem grand or loving. D’Arthez, the solitary

toiler, to whom the ways of the world were unknown, whom study had

wrapped in its protecting veils, was the dupe of her tones and words. He

was under the spell of those exquisite manners; he admired that perfect

beauty, ripened by misfortune, placid in retirement; he adored the union

of so rare a mind and so noble a soul; and he longed to become, himself,

the heir of Michel Chrestien.

The beginning of this passion was, as in the case of almost all deep

thinkers, an idea. Looking at the princess, studying the shape of her

head, the arrangement of those sweet features, her figure, her hand,

so finely modelled, closer than when he accompanied his friend in

their wild rush through the streets, he was struck by the surprising

phenomenon of the moral second-sight which a man exalted by love

invariably finds within him. With what lucidity had Michel Chrestien

read into that soul, that heart, illumined by the fires of love! Thus

the princess acquired, in d’Arthez’s eyes, another charm; a halo of

poesy surrounded her.

As the dinner proceeded, Daniel called to mind the various confidences

of his friend, his despair, his hopes, the noble poems of a true

sentiment sung to his ear alone, in honor of this woman. It is rare that

a man passes without remorse from the position of confidant to that of

rival, and d’Arthez was free to do so without dishonor. He had suddenly,

in a moment, perceived the enormous differences existing between a

well-bred woman, that flower of the great world, and common women,

though of the latter he did not know beyond one specimen. He was thus

captured on the most accessible and sensitive sides of his soul and of

his genius. Impelled by his simplicity, and by the impetuosity of his

ideas, to lay immediate claim to this woman, he found himself restrained

by society, also by the barrier which the manners and, let us say the

word, the majesty of the princess placed between them. The conversation,

which remained upon the topic of Michel Chrestien until the dessert, was

an excellent pretext for both to speak in a low voice: love, sympathy,

comprehension! she could pose as a maligned and misunderstood woman; he

could slip his feet into the shoes of the dead republican. Perhaps his

candid mind detected itself in regretting his dead friend less. The

princess, at the moment when the dessert appeared upon the table, and

the guests were separated by a brilliant hedge of fruits and sweetmeats,

thought best to put an end to this flow of confidences by a charming

little speech, in which she delicately expressed the idea that Daniel

and Michel were twin souls.

After this d’Arthez threw himself into the general conversation with

the gayety of a child, and a self-conceited air that was worthy of a

schoolboy. When they left the dining-room, the princess took d’Arthez’s

arm, in the simplest manner, to return to Madame d’Espard’s little

salon. As they crossed the grand salon she walked slowly, and when

sufficiently separated from the marquise, who was on Blondet’s arm, she

stopped.

“I do not wish to be inaccessible to the friend of that poor man,”

she said to d’Arthez; “and though I have made it a rule to receive no

visitors, you will always be welcome in my house. Do not think this a

favor. A favor is only for strangers, and to my mind you and I seem old

friends; I see in you the brother of Michel.”

D’Arthez could only press her arm, unable to make other reply.

After coffee was served, Diane de Cadignan wrapped herself, with

coquettish motions, in a large shawl, and rose. Blondet and Rastignac

were too much men of the world, and too polite to make the least

remonstrance, or try to detain her; but Madame d’Espard compelled her

friend to sit down again, whispering in her ear:--

“Wait till the servants have had their dinner; the carriage is not ready

yet.”

So saying, the marquise made a sign to the footman, who was taking away

the coffee-tray. Madame de Montcornet perceived that the princess and

Madame d’Espard had a word to say to each other, and she drew around her

d’Arthez, Rastignac, and Blondet, amusing them with one of those clever

paradoxical attacks which Parisian women understand so thoroughly.

“Well,” said the marquise to Diane, “what do you think of him?”

“He is an adorable child, just out of swaddling-clothes! This time, like

all other times, it will only be a triumph without a struggle.”

“Well, it is disappointing,” said Madame d’Espard. “But we might evade

it.”

“How?”

“Let me be your rival.”

“Just as you please,” replied the princess. “I’ve decided on my course.

Genius is a condition of the brain; I don’t know what the heart gets out

of it; we’ll talk about that later.”

Hearing the last few words, which were wholly incomprehensible to her,

Madame d’Espard returned to the general conversation, showing neither

offence at that indifferent “As you please,” nor curiosity as to the

outcome of the interview. The princess stayed an hour longer, seated on

the sofa near the fire, in the careless, nonchalant attitude of Guerin’s

Dido, listening with the attention of an absorbed mind, and looking

at Daniel now and then, without disguising her admiration, which never

went, however, beyond due limits. She slipped away when the carriage

was announced, with a pressure of the hand to the marquise, and an

inclination of the head to Madame de Montcornet.

The evening concluded without any allusion to the princess. The other

guests profited by the sort of exaltation which d’Arthez had reached,

for he put forth the treasures of his mind. In Blondet and Rastignac

he certainly had two acolytes of the first quality to bring forth the

delicacy of his wit and the breadth of his intellect. As for the two

women, they had long been counted among the cleverest in society. This

evening was like a halt in the oasis of a desert,--a rare enjoyment,

and well appreciated by these four persons, habitually victimized to the

endless caution entailed by the world of salons and politics. There

are beings who have the privilege of passing among men like beneficent

stars, whose light illumines the mind, while its rays send a glow to

the heart. D’Arthez was one of those beings. A writer who rises to his

level, accustoms himself to free thought, and forgets that in society

all things cannot be said; it is impossible for such a man to observe

the restraint of persons who live in the world perpetually; but as his

eccentricities of thought bore the mark of originality, no one felt

inclined to complain. This zest, this piquancy, rare in mere talent,

this youthfulness and simplicity of soul which made d’Arthez so nobly

original, gave a delightful charm to this evening. He left the house

with Rastignac, who, as they drove home, asked him how he liked the

princess.

“Michel did well to love her,” replied d’Arthez; “she is, indeed, an

extraordinary woman.”

“Very extraordinary,” replied Rastignac, dryly. “By the tone of your

voice I should judge you were in love with her already. You will be in

her house within three days; and I am too old a denizen of Paris not to

know what will be the upshot of that. Well, my dear Daniel, I do entreat

you not to allow yourself to be drawn into any confusion of interests,

so to speak. Love the princess if you feel any love for her in your

heart, but keep an eye on your fortune. She has never taken or asked a

penny from any man on earth, she is far too much of a d’Uxelles and a

Cadignan for that; but, to my knowledge, she has not only spent her

own fortune, which was very considerable, but she has made others

waste millions. How? why? by what means? No one knows; she doesn’t

know herself. I myself saw her swallow up, some thirteen years ago, the

entire fortune of a charming young fellow, and that of an old notary, in

twenty months.”

“Thirteen years ago!” exclaimed d’Arthez,--“why, how old is she now?”

“Didn’t you see, at dinner,” replied Rastignac, laughing, “her son, the

Duc de Maufrigneuse. That young man is nineteen years old; nineteen and

seventeen make--”

“Thirty-six!” cried the amazed author. “I gave her twenty.”

“She’ll accept them,” said Rastignac; “but don’t be uneasy, she will

always be twenty to you. You are about to enter the most fantastic

of worlds. Good-night, here you are at home,” said the baron, as they

entered the rue de Bellefond, where d’Arthez lived in a pretty little

house of his own. “We shall meet at Mademoiselle des Touches’s in the

course of the week.”

CHAPTER III. THE PRINCESS GOES TO WORK

D’Arthez allowed love to enter his heart after the manner of my Uncle

Toby, without making the slightest resistance; he proceeded by adoration

without criticism, and by exclusive admiration. The princess, that noble

creature, one of the most remarkable creations of our monstrous Paris,

where all things are possible, good as well as evil, became--whatever

vulgarity the course of time may have given to the expression--the angel

of his dreams. To fully understand the sudden transformation of this

illustrious author, it is necessary to realize the simplicity that

constant work and solitude leave in the heart; all that love--reduced

to a mere need, and now repugnant, beside an ignoble woman--excites of

regret and longings for diviner sentiments in the higher regions of the

soul. D’Arthez was, indeed, the child, the boy that Madame de Cadignan

had recognized. An illumination something like his own had taken place

in the beautiful Diane. At last she had met that superior man whom all

women desire and seek, if only to make a plaything of him,--that power

which they consent to obey, if only for the pleasure of subduing it;

at last she had found the grandeurs of the intellect united with

the simplicity of a heart all new to love; and she saw, with untold

happiness, that these merits were contained in a form that pleased her.

She thought d’Arthez handsome, and perhaps he was. Though he had reached

the age of gravity (for he was now thirty-eight), he still preserved

a flower of youth, due to the sober and ascetic life which he had led.

Like all men of sedentary habits, and statesmen, he had acquired

a certainly reasonable embonpoint. When very young, he bore some

resemblance to Bonaparte; and the likeness still continued, as much as a

man with black eyes and thick, dark hair could resemble a sovereign

with blue eyes and scanty, chestnut hair. But whatever there once was of

ardent and noble ambition in the great author’s eyes had been somewhat

quenched by successes. The thoughts with which that brow once teemed had

flowered; the lines of the hollow face were filling out. Ease now spread

its golden tints where, in youth, poverty had laid the yellow tones

of the class of temperament whose forces band together to support a

crushing and long-continued struggle. If you observe carefully the noble

faces of ancient philosophers, you will always find those deviations

from the type of a perfect human face which show the characteristic to

which each countenance owes its originality, chastened by the habit of

meditation, and by the calmness necessary for intellectual labor. The

most irregular features, like those of Socrates, for instance, become,

after a time, expressive of an almost divine serenity.

To the noble simplicity which characterized his head, d’Arthez added a

naive expression, the naturalness of a child, and a touching kindliness.

He did not have that politeness tinged with insincerity with which, in

society, the best-bred persons and the most amiable assume qualities in

which they are often lacking, leaving those they have thus duped wounded

and distressed. He might, indeed, fail to observe certain rules of

social life, owing to his isolated mode of living; but he never shocked

the sensibilities, and therefore this perfume of savagery made the

peculiar affability of a man of great talent the more agreeable; such

men know how to leave their superiority in their studies, and come

down to the social level, lending their backs, like Henry IV., to the

children’s leap-frog, and their minds to fools.

If d’Arthez did not brace himself against the spell which the princess

had cast about him, neither did she herself argue the matter in her own

mind, on returning home. It was settled for her. She loved with all her

knowledge and all her ignorance. If she questioned herself at all, it

was to ask whether she deserved so great a happiness, and what she had

done that Heaven should send her such an angel. She wanted to be worthy

of that love, to perpetuate it, to make it her own forever, and to

gently end her career of frivolity in the paradise she now foresaw. As

for coquetting, quibbling, resisting, she never once thought of it. She

was thinking of something very different!--of the grandeur of men of

genius, and the certainty which her heart divined that they would never

subject the woman they chose to ordinary laws.

Here begins one of those unseen comedies, played in the secret regions

of the consciousness between two beings of whom one will be the dupe of

the other, though it keeps on this side of wickedness; one of those

dark and comic dramas to which that of _Tartuffe_ is mere child’s

play,--dramas that do not enter the scenic domain, although they are

natural, conceivable, and even justifiable by necessity; dramas which

may be characterized as not vice, only the other side of it.

The princess began by sending for d’Arthez’s books, of which she had

never, as yet, read a single word, although she had managed to maintain

a twenty minutes’ eulogism and discussion of them without a blunder. She

now read them all. Then she wanted to compare these books with the best

that contemporary literature had produced. By the time d’Arthez came to

see her she was having an indigestion of mind. Expecting this visit, she

had daily made a toilet of what may be called the superior order; that

is, a toilet which expresses an idea, and makes it accepted by the eye

without the owner of the eye knowing why or wherefore. She presented an

harmonious combination of shades of gray, a sort of semi-mourning, full

of graceful renunciation,--the garments of a woman who holds to life

only through a few natural ties,--her child, for instance,--but who is

weary of life. Those garments bore witness to an elegant disgust, not

reaching, however, as far as suicide; no, she would live out her days in

these earthly galleys.

She received d’Arthez as a woman who expected him, and as if he had

already been to see her a hundred times; she did him the honor to treat

him like an old acquaintance, and she put him at his ease by pointing

to a seat on a sofa, while she finished a note she was then writing. The

conversation began in a commonplace manner: the weather, the ministry,

de Marsay’s illness, the hopes of the legitimists. D’Arthez was an

absolutist; the princess could not be ignorant of the opinions of a

man who sat in the Chamber among the fifteen or twenty persons who

represented the legitimist party; she found means to tell him how she

had fooled de Marsay to the top of his bent, then, by an easy transition

to the royal family and to “Madame,” and the devotion of the Prince

de Cadignan to their service, she drew d’Arthez’s attention to the

prince:--

“There is this to be said for him: he loved his masters, and was

faithful to them. His public character consoles me for the sufferings

his private life has inflicted upon me--Have you never remarked,” she

went on, cleverly leaving the prince aside, “you who observe so much,

that men have two natures: one of their homes, their wives, their

private lives,--this is their true self; here no mask, no dissimulation;

they do not give themselves the trouble to disguise a feeling; they are

what they ARE, and it is often horrible! The other man is for others,

for the world, for salons; the court, the sovereign, the public often

see them grand, and noble, and generous, embroidered with virtues,

adorned with fine language, full of admirable qualities. What a horrible

jest it is!--and the world is surprised, sometimes, at the caustic smile

of certain women, at their air of superiority to their husbands, and

their indifference--”

She let her hand fall along the arm of her chair, without ending her

sentence, but the gesture admirably completed the speech. She saw

d’Arthez watching her flexible figure, gracefully bending in the depths

of her easy-chair, noting the folds of her gown, and the pretty little

ruffle which sported on her breast,--one of those audacities of the

toilet that are suited only to slender waists,--and she resumed the

thread of her thoughts as if she were speaking to herself:--

“But I will say no more. You writers have ended by making ridiculous

all women who think they are misunderstood, or ill-mated, and who try to

make themselves dramatically interesting,--attempts which seem to me, I

must say, intolerably vulgar. There are but two things for women in that

plight to do,--yield, and all is over; resist, and amuse themselves; in

either case they should keep silence. It is true that I neither yielded

wholly, nor resisted wholly; but, perhaps, that was only the more reason

why I should be silent. What folly for women to complain! If they

have not proved the stronger, they have failed in sense, in tact, in

capacity, and they deserve their fate. Are they not queens in France?

They can play with you as they like, when they like, and as much as they

like.” Here she danced her vinaigrette with an airy movement of feminine

impertinence and mocking gayety. “I have often heard miserable little

specimens of my sex regretting that they were women, wishing they were

men; I have always regarded them with pity. If I had to choose, I should

still elect to be a woman. A fine pleasure, indeed, to owe one’s triumph

to force, and to all those powers which you give yourselves by the

laws you make! But to see you at our feet, saying and doing foolish

things,--ah! it is an intoxicating pleasure to feel within our souls

that weakness triumphs! But when we triumph, we ought to keep silence,

under pain of losing our empire. Beaten, a woman’s pride should gag her.

The slave’s silence alarms the master.”

This chatter was uttered in a voice so softly sarcastic, so dainty, and

with such coquettish motions of the head, that d’Arthez, to whom this

style of woman was totally unknown, sat before her exactly like a

partridge charmed by a setter.

“I entreat you, madame,” he said, at last, “to tell me how it was

possible that a man could make you suffer? Be assured that where, as you

say, other women are common and vulgar, you can only seem distinguished;

your manner of saying things would make a cook-book interesting.”

“You go fast in friendship,” she said, in a grave voice which made

d’Arthez extremely uneasy.

The conversation changed; the hour was late, and the poor man of genius

went away contrite for having seemed curious, and for wounding the

sensitive heart of that rare woman who had so strangely suffered. As

for her, she had passed her life in amusing herself with men, and was

another Don Juan in female attire, with this difference: she would

certainly not have invited the Commander to supper, and would have got

the better of any statue.

It is impossible to continue this tale without saying a word about

the Prince de Cadignan, better known under the name of the Duc de

Maufrigneuse, otherwise the spice of the princess’s confidences would

be lost, and strangers would not understand the Parisian comedy she was

about to play for her man of genius.

The Duc de Maufrigneuse, like a true son of the old Prince de Cadignan,

is a tall, lean man, of elegant shape, very graceful, a sayer of witty

things, colonel by the grace of God, and a good soldier by accident;

brave as a Pole, which means without sense or discernment, and hiding

the emptiness of his mind under the jargon of good society. After the

age of thirty-six he was forced to be as absolutely indifferent to

the fair sex as his master Charles X., punished, like that master, for

having pleased it too well. For eighteen years the idol of the faubourg

Saint-Germain, he had, like other heirs of great families led a

dissipated life, spent solely on pleasure. His father, ruined by the

revolution, had somewhat recovered his position on the return of the

Bourbons, as governor of a royal domain, with salary and perquisites;

but this uncertain fortune the old prince spent, as it came, in keeping

up the traditions of a great seigneur before the revolution; so that

when the law of indemnity was passed, the sums he received were all

swallowed up in the luxury he displayed in his vast hotel.

The old prince died some little time before the revolution of July aged

eighty-seven. He had ruined his wife, and had long been on bad terms

with the Duc de Navarreins, who had married his daughter for a first

wife, and to whom he very reluctantly rendered his accounts. The Duc

de Maufrigneuse, early in life, had had relations with the Duchesse

d’Uxelles. About the year 1814, when Monsieur de Maufrigneuse was

forty-six years of age, the duchess, pitying his poverty, and seeing

that he stood very well at court, gave him her daughter Diane, then in

her seventeenth year, and possessing, in her own right, some fifty or

sixty thousand francs a year, not counting her future expectations.

Mademoiselle d’Uxelles thus became a duchess, and, as her mother very

well knew, she enjoyed the utmost liberty. The duke, after obtaining

the unexpected happiness of an heir, left his wife entirely to her

own devices, and went off to amuse himself in the various garrisons of

France, returning occasionally to Paris, where he made debts which his

father paid. He professed the most entire conjugal indulgence, always

giving the duchess a week’s warning of his return; he was adored by

his regiment, beloved by the Dauphin, an adroit courtier, somewhat of

a gambler, and totally devoid of affectation. Having succeeded to his

father’s office as governor of one of the royal domains, he managed to

please the two kings, Louis XVIII. and Charles X., which proves he made

the most of his nonentity; and even the liberals liked him; but his

conduct and life were covered with the finest varnish; language, noble

manners, and deportment were brought by him to a state of perfection.

But, as the old prince said, it was impossible for him to continue the

traditions of the Cadignans, who were all well known to have ruined

their wives, for the duchess was running through her property on her own

account.

These particulars were so well understood in the court circles and

in the faubourg Saint-Germain, that during the last five years of

the Restoration they were considered ancient history, and any one who

mentioned them would have been laughed at. Women never spoke of the

charming duke without praising him; he was excellent, they said, to his

wife; could a man be better? He had left her the entire disposal of her

own property, and had always defended her on every occasion. It is

true that, whether from pride, kindliness, or chivalry, Monsieur de

Maufrigneuse had saved the duchess under various circumstances which

might have ruined other women, in spite of Diane’s surroundings, and

the influence of her mother and that of the Duc de Navarreins, her

father-in-law, and her husband’s aunt.

For several ensuing days the princess revealed herself to d’Arthez as

remarkable for her knowledge of literature. She discussed with perfect

fearlessness the most difficult questions, thanks to her daily and

nightly reading, pursued with an intrepidity worthy of the highest

praise. D’Arthez, amazed, and incapable of suspecting that Diane

d’Uxelles merely repeated at night that which she read in the morning

(as some writers do), regarded her as a most superior woman. These

conversations, however, led away from Diane’s object, and she tried to

get back to the region of confidences from which d’Arthez had prudently

retired after her coquettish rebuff; but it was not as easy as she

expected to bring back a man of his nature who had once been startled

away.

However, after a month of literary campaigning and the finest platonic

discourses, d’Arthez grew bolder, and arrived every day at three

o’clock. He retired at six, and returned at nine, to remain until

midnight, or one in the morning, with the regularity of an ardent and

impatient lover. The princess was always dressed with more or less

studied elegance at the hour when d’Arthez presented himself. This

mutual fidelity, the care they each took of their appearance, in fact,

all about them expressed sentiments that neither dared avow, for the

princess discerned very plainly that the great child with whom she had

to do shrank from the combat as much as she desired it. Nevertheless

d’Arthez put into his mute declarations a respectful awe which was

infinitely pleasing to her. Both felt, every day, all the more united

because nothing acknowledged or definite checked the course of their

ideas, as occurs between lovers when there are formal demands on one

side, and sincere or coquettish refusals on the other.

Like all men younger than their actual age, d’Arthez was a prey to those

agitating irresolutions which are caused by the force of desires and

the terror of displeasing,--a situation which a young woman does not

comprehend when she shares it, but which the princess had too often

deliberately produced not to enjoy its pleasures. In fact, Diane enjoyed

these delightful juvenilities all the more keenly because she knew that

she could put an end to them at any moment. She was like a great artist

delighting in the vague, undecided lines of his sketch, knowing well

that in a moment of inspiration he can complete the masterpiece still

waiting to come to birth. Many a time, seeing d’Arthez on the point

of advancing, she enjoyed stopping him short, with an imposing air and

manner. She drove back the hidden storms of that still young heart,

raised them again, and stilled them with a look, holding out her hand

to be kissed, or saying some trifling insignificant words in a tender

voice.

These manoeuvres, planned in cold blood, but enchantingly executed,

carved her image deeper and deeper on the soul of that great writer and

thinker whom she revelled in making childlike, confiding, simple, and

almost silly beside her. And yet she had moments of repulsion against

her own act, moments in which she could not help admiring the grandeur

of such simplicity. This game of choicest coquetry attached her,

insensibly, to her slave. At last, however, Diane grew impatient with

an Epictetus of love; and when she thought she had trained him to the

utmost credulity, she set to work to tie a thicker bandage still over

his eyes.

CHAPTER IV. THE CONFESSION OF A PRETTY WOMAN

One evening Daniel found the princess thoughtful, one elbow resting on

a little table, her beautiful blond head bathed in light from the lamp.

She was toying with a letter which lay on the table-cloth. When d’Arthez

had seen the paper distinctly, she folded it up, and stuck it in her

belt.

“What is the matter?” asked d’Arthez; “you seem distressed.”

“I have received a letter from Monsieur de Cadignan,” she replied.

“However great the wrongs he has done me, I cannot help thinking of his

exile--without family, without son--from his native land.”

These words, said in a soulful voice, betrayed angelic sensibility.

D’Arthez was deeply moved. The curiosity of the lover became, so to

speak, a psychological and literary curiosity. He wanted to know the

height that woman had attained, and what were the injuries she thus

forgave; he longed to know how these women of the world, taxed with

frivolity, cold-heartedness, and egotism, could be such angels.

Remembering how the princess had already repulsed him when he first

tried to read that celestial heart, his voice, and he himself, trembled

as he took the transparent, slender hand of the beautiful Diane with its

curving finger-tips, and said,--

“Are we now such friends that you will tell me what you have suffered?”

“Yes,” she said, breathing forth the syllable like the most mellifluous

note that Tulou’s flute had ever sighed.

Then she fell into a revery, and her eyes were veiled. Daniel remained

in a state of anxious expectation, impressed with the solemnity of the

occasion. His poetic imagination made him see, as it were, clouds slowly

dispersing and disclosing to him the sanctuary where the wounded lamb

was kneeling at the divine feet.

“Well?” he said, in a soft, still voice.

Diane looked at the tender petitioner; then she lowered her eyes slowly,

dropping their lids with a movement of noble modesty. None but a

monster would have been capable of imagining hypocrisy in the graceful

undulation of the neck with which the princess again lifted her charming

head, to look once more into the eager eyes of that great man.

“Can I? ought I?” she murmured, with a gesture of hesitation, gazing at

d’Arthez with a sublime expression of dreamy tenderness. “Men have so

little faith in things of this kind; they think themselves so little

bound to be discreet!”

“Ah! if you distrust me, why am I here?” cried d’Arthez.

“Oh, friend!” she said, giving to the exclamation the grace of an

involuntary avowal, “when a woman attaches herself for life, think you

she calculates? It is not question of refusal (how could I refuse you

anything?), but the idea of what you may think of me if I speak. I would

willingly confide to you the strange position in which I am at my age;

but what would you think of a woman who could reveal the secret wounds

of her married life? Turenne kept his word to robbers; do I not owe to

my torturers the honor of a Turenne?”

“Have you passed your word to say nothing?”

“Monsieur de Cadignan did not think it necessary to bind me to

secrecy--You are asking more than my soul! Tyrant! you want me to bury

my honor itself in your breast,” she said, casting upon d’Arthez a

look, by which she gave more value to her coming confidence than to her

personal self.

“You must think me a very ordinary man, if you fear any evil, no matter

what, from me,” he said, with ill-concealed bitterness.

“Forgive me, friend,” she replied, taking his hand in hers caressingly,

and letting her fingers wander gently over it. “I know your worth. You

have related to me your whole life; it is noble, it is beautiful, it is

sublime, and worthy of your name; perhaps, in return, I owe you mine.

But I fear to lower myself in your eyes by relating secrets which

are not wholly mine. How can you believe--you, a man of solitude and

poesy--the horrors of social life? Ah! you little think when you invent

your dramas that they are far surpassed by those that are played in

families apparently united. You are wholly ignorant of certain gilded

sorrows.”

“I know all!” he cried.

“No, you know nothing.”

D’Arthez felt like a man lost on the Alps of a dark night, who sees,

at the first gleam of dawn, a precipice at his feet. He looked at the

princess with a bewildered air, and felt a cold chill running down his

back. Diane thought for a moment that her man of genius was a weakling,

but a flash from his eyes reassured her.

“You have become to me almost my judge,” she said, with a desperate air.

“I must speak now, in virtue of the right that all calumniated beings

have to show their innocence. I have been, I am still (if a poor recluse

forced by the world to renounce the world is still remembered) accused

of such light conduct, and so many evil things, that it may be allowed

me to find in one strong heart a haven from which I cannot be driven.

Hitherto I have always considered self-justification an insult to

innocence; and that is why I have disdained to defend myself. Besides,

to whom could I appeal? Such cruel things can be confided to none but

God or to one who seems to us very near Him--a priest, or another self.

Well! I do know this, if my secrets are not as safe there,” she said,

laying her hand on d’Arthez’s heart, “as they are here” (pressing the

upper end of her busk beneath her fingers), “then you are not the grand

d’Arthez I think you--I shall have been deceived.”

A tear moistened d’Arthez’s eyes, and Diane drank it in with a side

look, which, however, gave no motion either to the pupils or the lids of

her eyes. It was quick and neat, like the action of a cat pouncing on a

mouse.

D’Arthez, for the first time, after sixty days of protocols, ventured

to take that warm and perfumed hand, and press it to his lips with a

long-drawn kiss, extending from the wrist to the tip of the fingers,

which made the princess augur well of literature. She thought to herself

that men of genius must know how to love with more perfection than

conceited fops, men of the world, diplomatists, and even soldiers,

although such beings have nothing else to do. She was a connoisseur, and

knew very well that the capacity for love reveals itself chiefly in mere

nothings. A woman well informed in such matters can read her future in

a simple gesture; just as Cuvier could say from the fragment of a bone:

This belonged to an animal of such or such dimensions, with or without

horns, carnivorous, herbivorous, amphibious, etc., age, so many thousand

years. Sure now of finding in d’Arthez as much imagination in love as

there was in his written style, she thought it wise to bring him up at

once to the highest pitch of passion and belief.

She withdrew her hand hastily, with a magnificent movement full of

varied emotions. If she had said in words: “Stop, or I shall die,” she

could not have spoken more plainly. She remained for a moment with

her eyes in d’Arthez’s eyes, expressing in that one glance happiness,

prudery, fear, confidence, languor, a vague longing, and virgin modesty.

She was twenty years old! but remember, she had prepared for this hour

of comic falsehood by the choicest art of dress; she was there in her

armchair like a flower, ready to blossom at the first kiss of sunshine.

True or false, she intoxicated Daniel.

It if is permissible to risk a personal opinion we must avow that it

would be delightful to be thus deceived for a good long time. Certainly

Talma on the stage was often above and beyond nature, but the Princesse

de Cadignan is the greatest true comedian of our day. Nothing was

wanting to this woman but an attentive audience. Unfortunately, at

epochs perturbed by political storms, women disappear like water-lilies

which need a cloudless sky and balmy zephyrs to spread their bloom to

our enraptured eyes.

The hour had come; Diane was now to entangle that great man in the

inextricable meshes of a romance carefully prepared, to which he was

fated to listen as the neophyte of early Christian times listened to the

epistles of an apostle.

“My friend,” began Diane, “my mother, who still lives at Uxelles,

married me in 1814, when I was seventeen years old (you see how old I am

now!) to Monsieur de Maufrigneuse, not out of affection for me, but out

of regard for him. She discharged her debt to the only man she had ever

loved, for the happiness she had once received from him. Oh! you need

not be astonished at so horrible a conspiracy; it frequently takes

place. Many women are more lovers than mothers, though the majority

are more mothers than wives. The two sentiments, love and motherhood,

developed as they are by our manners and customs, often struggle

together in the hearts of women; one or other must succumb when they

are not of equal strength; when they are, they produce some exceptional

women, the glory of our sex. A man of your genius must surely comprehend

many things that bewilder fools but are none the less true; indeed I may

go further and call them justifiable through difference of characters,

temperaments, attachments, situations. I, for example, at this moment,

after twenty years of misfortunes, of deceptions, of calumnies endured,

and weary days and hollow pleasures, is it not natural that I should

incline to fall at the feet of a man who would love me sincerely and

forever? And yet, the world would condemn me. But twenty years of

suffering might well excuse a few brief years which may still remain to

me of youth given to a sacred and real love. This will not happen. I am

not so rash as to sacrifice my hopes of heaven. I have borne the burden

and heat of the day, I shall finish my course and win my recompense.”

“Angel!” thought d’Arthez.

“After all, I have never blamed my mother; she knew little of me.

Mothers who lead a life like that of the Duchesse d’Uxelles keep their

children at a distance. I saw and knew nothing of the world until my

marriage. You can judge of my innocence! I knew nothing; I was incapable

of understanding the causes of my marriage. I had a fine fortune; sixty

thousand francs a year in forests, which the Revolution overlooked (or

had not been able to sell) in the Nivernais, with the noble chateau of

d’Anzy. Monsieur de Maufrigneuse was steeped in debt. Later I learned

what it was to have debts, but then I was too utterly ignorant of life

to suspect my position; the money saved out of my fortune went to pacify

my husband’s creditors. Monsieur de Maufrigneuse was forty-eight years

of age when I married him; but those years were like military campaigns,

they ought to count for twice what they were. Ah! what a life I led for

ten years! If any one had known the suffering of this poor, calumniated

little woman! To be watched by a mother jealous of her daughter!

Heavens! You who make dramas, you will never invent anything as direful

as that. Ordinarily, according to the little that I know of literature,

a drama is a suite of actions, speeches, movements which hurry to a

catastrophe; but what I speak of was a catastrophe in action. It was an

avalanche fallen in the morning and falling again at night only to

fall again the next day. I am cold now as I speak to you of that cavern

without an opening, cold, sombre, in which I lived. I, poor little thing

that I was! brought up in a convent like a mystic rose, knowing nothing

of marriage, developing late, I was happy at first; I enjoyed the

goodwill and harmony of our family. The birth of my poor boy, who is

all me--you must have been struck by the likeness? my hair, my eyes, the

shape of my face, my mouth, my smile, my teeth!--well, his birth was a

relief to me; my thoughts were diverted by the first joys of maternity

from my husband, who gave me no pleasure and did nothing for me that

was kind or amiable; those joys were all the keener because I knew no

others. It had been so often rung into my ears that a mother should

respect herself. Besides, a young girl loves to play the mother. I was

so proud of my flower--for Georges was beautiful, a miracle, I thought!

I saw and thought of nothing but my son, I lived with my son. I never

let his nurse dress or undress him. Such cares, so wearing to mothers

who have a regiment of children, were all my pleasure. But after three

or four years, as I was not an actual fool, light came to my eyes in

spite of the pains taken to blindfold me. Can you see me at that

final awakening, in 1819? The drama of ‘The Brothers at enmity’ is a

rose-water tragedy beside that of a mother and daughter placed as we

then were. But I braved them all, my mother, my husband, the world,

by public coquetries which society talked of,--and heaven knows how it

talked! You can see, my friend, how the men with whom I was accused of

folly were to me the dagger with which to stab my enemies. Thinking only

of my vengeance, I did not see or feel the wounds I was inflicting on

myself. Innocent as a child, I was thought a wicked woman, the worst of

women, and I knew nothing of it! The world is very foolish, very blind,

very ignorant; it can penetrate no secrets but those which amuse it and

serve its malice: noble things, great things, it puts its hand before

its eyes to avoid seeing. But, as I look back, it seems to me that I had

an attitude and aspect of indignant innocence, with movements of pride,

which a great painter would have recognized. I must have enlivened many

a ball with my tempests of anger and disdain. Lost poesy! such sublime

poems are only made in the glowing indignation which seizes us at

twenty. Later, we are wrathful no longer, we are too weary, vice no

longer amazes us, we are cowards, we fear. But then--oh! I kept a great

pace! For all that I played the silliest personage in the world; I was

charged with crimes by which I never benefited. But I had such pleasure

in compromising myself. That was my revenge! Ah! I have played many

childish tricks! I went to Italy with a thoughtless youth, whom I

crushed when he spoke to me of love, but later, when I herd that he was

compromised on my account (he had committed a forgery to get money) I

rushed to save him. My mother and husband kept me almost without means;

but, this time, I went to the king. Louis XVIII., that man without a

heart, was touched; he gave me a hundred thousand francs from his privy

purse. The Marquis d’Esgrignon--you must have seen him in society for he

ended by making a rich marriage--was saved from the abyss into which he

had plunged for my sake. That adventure, caused by my own folly, led me

to reflect. I saw that I myself was the first victim of my vengeance.

My mother, who knew I was too proud, too d’Uxelles, to conduct

myself really ill, began to see the harm that she had done me and was

frightened by it. She was then fifty-two years of age; she left Paris

and went to live at Uxelles. There she expiates her wrong-doing by a

life of devotion and expresses the utmost affection for me. After her

departure I was face to face, alone, with Monsieur de Maufrigneuse. Oh!

my friend, you men can never know what an old man of gallantry can be.

What a home is that of a man accustomed to the adulation of women of the

world, when he finds neither incense nor censer in his own house! dead

to all! and yet, perhaps for that very reason, jealous. I wished--when

Monsieur de Maufrigneuse was wholly mine--I wished to be a good wife,

but I found myself repulsed with the harshness of a soured spirit by

a man who treated me like a child and took pleasure in humiliating

my self-respect at every turn, in crushing me under the scorn of his

experience, and in convicting me of total ignorance. He wounded me on

all occasions. He did everything to make me detest him and to give me

the right to betray him; but I was still the dupe of my own hope and of

my desire to do right through several years. Shall I tell you the cruel

saying that drove me to further follies? ‘The Duchesse de Maufrigneuse

has gone back to her husband,’ said the world. ‘Bah! it is always a

triumph to bring the dead to life; it is all she can now do,’ replied my

best friend, a relation, she, at whose house I met you--”

“Madame d’Espard!” cried Daniel, with a gesture of horror.

“Oh! I have forgiven her. Besides, it was very witty; and I have myself

made just as cruel epigrams on other poor women as innocent as myself.”

D’Arthez again kissed the hand of that saintly woman who, having hacked

her mother in pieces, and turned the Prince de Cadignan into an Othello,

now proceeded to accuse herself in order to appear in the eyes of that

innocent great man as immaculate as the silliest or the wisest of women

desire to seem at all costs to their lovers.

“You will readily understand, my friend, that I returned to society for

the purpose of excitement and I may say of notoriety. I felt that I must

conquer my independence. I led a life of dissipation. To divert my mind,

to forget my real life in fictitious enjoyments I was gay, I shone, I

gave fetes, I played the princess, and I ran in debt. At home I could

forget myself in the sleep of weariness, able to rise the next day gay,

and frivolous for the world; but in that sad struggle to escape my real

life I wasted my fortune. The revolution of 1830 came; it came at the

very moment when I had met, at the end of that _Arabian Nights’_ life, a

pure and sacred love which (I desire to be honest) I had longed to know.

Was it not natural in a woman whose heart, repressed by many causes and

accidents, was awakening at an age when a woman feels herself cheated

if she has never known, like the women she sees about her, a happy love?

Ah! why was Michel Chrestien so respectful? Why did he not seek to meet

me? There again was another mockery! But what of that? in falling, I

have lost everything; I have no illusions left; I had tasted of all

things except the one fruit for which I have no longer teeth. Yes, I

found myself disenchanted with the world at the very moment when I was

forced to leave it. Providential, was it not? like all those strange

insensibilities which prepare us for death” (she made a gesture full

of pious unction). “All things served me then,” she continued; “the

disasters of the monarchy and its ruin helped me to bury myself. My son

consoles me for much. Maternal love takes the place of all frustrated

feelings. The world is surprised at my retirement, but to me it has

brought peace. Ah! if you knew how happy the poor creature before you is

in this little place. In sacrificing all to my son I forget to think of

joys of which I am and ever must be ignorant. Yes, hope has flown, I

now fear everything; no doubt I should repulse the truest sentiment,

the purest and most veritable love, in memory of the deceptions and the

miseries of my life. It is all horrible, is it not? and yet, what I have

told you is the history of many women.”

The last few words were said in a tone of easy pleasantry which recalled

the presence of the woman of the world. D’Arthez was dumbfounded. In his

eyes convicts sent to the galleys for murder, or aggravated robbery, or

for putting a wrong name to checks, were saints compared to the men and

women of society. This atrocious elegy, forged in the arsenal of lies,

and steeped in the waters of the Parisian Styx, had been poured into his

ears with the inimitable accent of truth. The grave author contemplated

for a moment that adorable woman lying back in her easy-chair, her two

hands pendant from its arms like dewdrops from a rose-leaf, overcome

by her own revelation, living over again the sorrows of her life as she

told them--in short an angel of melancholy.

“And judge,” she cried, suddenly lifting herself with a spring and

raising her hand, while lightning flashed from eyes where twenty chaste

years shone--“judge of the impression the love of a man like Michel

must have made upon me. But by some irony of fate--or was it the hand of

God?--well, he died; died in saving the life of, whom do you suppose? of

Monsieur de Cadignan. Are you now surprised to find me thoughtful?”

This was the last drop; poor d’Arthez could bear no more. He fell upon

his knees, and laid his head on Diane’s hand, weeping soft tears such

as the angels shed,--if angels weep. As Daniel was in that bent posture,

Madame de Cadignan could safely let a malicious smile of triumph flicker

on her lips, a smile such as the monkeys wear after playing a sly

trick--if monkeys smile.

“Ah! I have him,” thought she; and, indeed, she had him fast.

“But you are--” he said, raising his fine head and looking at her with

eyes of love.

“Virgin and martyr,” she replied, smiling at the commonness of that

hackneyed expression, but giving it a freshness of meaning by her smile,

so full of painful gayety. “If I laugh,” she continued, “it is that I am

thinking of that princess whom the world thinks it knows, that Duchesse

de Maufrigneuse to whom it gives as lovers de Marsay, that infamous de

Trailles (a political cutthroat), and that little fool of a d’Esgrignon,

and Rastignac, Rubempre, ambassadors, ministers, Russian generals,

heaven knows who! all Europe! They have gossiped about that album which

I ordered made, believing that those who admired me were my friends. Ah!

it is frightful! I wonder that I allow a man at my feet! Despise them

all, THAT should be my religion.”

She rose and went to the window with a gait and bearing magnificent in

motifs.

D’Arthez remained on the low seat to which he had returned not daring

to follow the princess; but he looked at her; he heard her blowing her

nose. Was there ever a princess who blew her nose? but Diane attempted

the impossible to convey an idea of her sensibility. D’Arthez believed

his angel was in tears; he rushed to her side, took her round the waist,

and pressed her to his heart.

“No, no, leave me!” she murmured in a feeble voice. “I have too many

doubts to be good for anything. To reconcile me with life is a task

beyond the powers of any man.”

“Diane! I will love you for your whole lost life.”

“No; don’t speak to me thus,” she answered. “At this moment I tremble, I

am ashamed as though I had committed the greatest sins.”

She was now entirely restored to the innocence of little girls, and

yet her bearing was august, grand, noble as that of a queen. It is

impossible to describe the effect of these manoeuvres, so clever that

they acted like the purest truth on a soul as fresh and honest as that

of d’Arthez. The great author remained dumb with admiration, passive

beside her in the recess of that window awaiting a word, while the

princess awaited a kiss; but she was far too sacred to him for that.

Feeling cold, the princess returned to her easy-chair; her feet were

frozen.

“It will take a long time,” she said to herself, looking at Daniel’s

noble brow and head.

“Is this a woman?” thought that profound observer of human nature. “How

ought I to treat her?”

Until two o’clock in the morning they spent their time in saying to each

other the silly things that women of genius, like the princess, know how

to make adorable. Diane pretended to be too worn, too old, too faded;

D’Arthez proved to her (facts of which she was well convinced) that her

skin was the most delicate, the softest to the touch, the whitest to the

eye, the most fragrant; she was young and in her bloom, how could she

think otherwise? Thus they disputed, beauty by beauty, detail by detail

with many: “Oh! do you think so?”--“You are beside yourself!”--“It is

hope, it is fancy!”--“You will soon see me as I am.--I am almost forty

years of age. Can a man love so old a woman?”

D’Arthez responded with impetuous and school-boy eloquence, larded with

exaggerated epithets. When the princess heard this wise and witty writer

talking the nonsense of an amorous sub-lieutenant she listened with an

absorbed air and much sensibility; but she laughed in her sleeve.

When d’Arthez was in the street, he asked himself whether he might not

have been rather less respectful. He went over in memory those strange

confidences--which have, naturally, been much abridged here, for they

needed a volume to convey their mellifluous abundance and the graces

which accompanied them. The retrospective perspicacity of this man, so

natural, so profound, was baffled by the candor of that tale and its

poignancy, and by the tones of the princess.

“It is true,” he said to himself, being unable to sleep, “there are such

dramas as that in society. Society covers great horrors with the flowers

of its elegance, the embroidery of its gossip, the wit of its lies. We

writers invent no more than the truth. Poor Diane! Michel had penetrated

that enigma; he said that beneath her covering of ice there lay

volcanoes! Bianchon and Rastignac were right; when a man can join the

grandeurs of the ideal and the enjoyments of human passion in loving

a woman of perfect manners, of intellect, of delicacy, it must be

happiness beyond words.”

So thinking, he sounded the love that was in him and found it infinite.

CHAPTER V. A TRIAL OF FAITH

The next day, about two in the afternoon, Madame d’Espard, who had seen

and heard nothing of the princess for more than a month, went to see her

under the impulse of extreme curiosity. Nothing was ever more amusing

of its kind than the conversation of these two crafty adders during the

first half-hour of this visit.

Diane d’Uxelles cautiously avoided, as she would the wearing of a yellow

gown, all mention of d’Arthez. The marquise circled round and round that

topic like a Bedouin round a caravan. Diane amused herself; the marquise

fumed. Diane waited; she intended to utilize her friend and use her in

the chase. Of these two women, both so celebrated in the social world,

one was far stronger than the other. The princess rose by a head

above the marquise, and the marquise was inwardly conscious of that

superiority. In this, perhaps, lay the secret of their intimacy. The

weaker of the two crouched low in her false attachment, watching for the

hour, long awaited by feeble beings, of springing at the throat of the

stronger and leaving the mark of a joyful bite. Diane saw clear; but the

world was the dupe of the wile caresses of the two friends.

The instant that the princess perceived a direct question on the lips of

her friend, she said:--

“Ah! dearest, I owe you a most complete, immense, infinite, celestial

happiness.”

“What can you mean?”

“Have you forgotten what we ruminated three months ago in the little

garden, sitting on a bench in the sun, under the jasmine? Ah! there are

none but men of genius who know how to love! I apply to my grand Daniel

d’Arthez the Duke of Alba’s saying to Catherine de’ Medici: ‘The head of

a single salmon is worth all the frogs in the world.’”

“I am not surprised that I no longer see you,” said Madame d’Espard.

“Promise me, if you meet him, not to say to him one word about me, my

angel,” said the princess, taking her friend’s hand. “I am happy, oh!

happy beyond all expression; but you know that in society a word, a mere

jest can do much harm. One speech can kill, for they put such venom into

a single sentence! Ah! if you knew how I long that you might meet with

a love like this! Yes, it is a sweet, a precious triumph for women like

ourselves to end our woman’s life in this way; to rest in an ardent,

pure, devoted, complete and absolute love; above all, when we have

sought it long.”

“Why do you ask me to be faithful to my dearest friend?” said Madame

d’Espard. “Do you think me capable of playing you some villainous

trick?”

“When a woman possesses such a treasure the fear of losing it is so

strong that it naturally inspires a feeling of terror. I am absurd, I

know; forgive me, dear.”

A few moments later the marquise departed; as she watched her go the

princess said to herself:--

“How she will pluck me! But to save her the trouble of trying to get

Daniel away from here I’ll send him to her.”

At three o’clock, or a few moments after, d’Arthez arrived. In the midst

of some interesting topic on which he was discoursing eloquently, the

princess suddenly cut him short by laying her hand on his arm.

“Pardon me, my dear friend,” she said, interrupting him, “but I fear

I may forget a thing which seems a mere trifle but may be of great

importance. You have not set foot in Madame d’Espard’s salon since the

ever-blessed day when I met you there. Pray go at once; not for your

sake, nor by way of politeness, but for me. You may already have made

her an enemy of mine, if by chance she has discovered that since her

dinner you have scarcely left my house. Besides, my friend, I don’t like

to see you dropping your connection with society, and neglecting your

occupations and your work. I should again be strangely calumniated. What

would the world say? That I held you in leading-strings, absorbed you,

feared comparisons, and clung to my conquest knowing it to be my last!

Who will know that you are my friend, my only friend? If you love me

indeed, as you say you love me, you will make the world believe that

we are purely and simply brother and sister--Go on with what you were

saying.”

In his armor of tenderness, riveted by the knowledge of so many splendid

virtues, d’Arthez obeyed this behest on the following day and went

to see Madame d’Espard, who received him with charming coquetry. The

marquise took very good care not to say a single word to him about the

princess, but she asked him to dinner on a coming day.

On this occasion d’Arthez found a numerous company. The marquise

had invited Rastignac, Blondet, the Marquis d’Ajuda-Pinto, Maxime de

Trailles, the Marquis d’Esgrignon, the two brothers Vandenesse, du

Tillet, one of the richest bankers in Paris, the Baron de Nucingen,

Raoul Nathan, Lady Dudley, two very treacherous secretaries of embassies

and the Chevalier d’Espard, the wiliest person in this assemblage and

the chief instigator of his sister-in-law’s policy.

When dinner was well under way, Maxime de Trailles turned to d’Arthez

and said smiling:--

“You see a great deal, don’t you, of the Princesse de Cadignan?”

To this question d’Arthez responded by curtly nodding his head. Maxime

de Trailles was a “bravo” of the social order, without faith or law,

capable of everything, ruining the women who trusted him, compelling

them to pawn their diamonds to give him money, but covering this conduct

with a brilliant varnish; a man of charming manners and satanic mind.

He inspired all who knew him with equal contempt and fear; but as no

one was bold enough to show him any sentiments but those of the utmost

courtesy he saw nothing of this public opinion, or else he accepted and

shared the general dissimulation. He owed to the Comte de Marsay the

greatest degree of elevation to which he could attain. De Marsay,

whose knowledge of Maxime was of long-standing, judged him capable of

fulfilling certain secret and diplomatic functions which he confided to

him and of which de Trailles acquitted himself admirably. D’Arthez had

for some time past mingled sufficiently in political matters to know the

man for what he was, and he alone had sufficient strength and height of

character to express aloud what others thought or said in a whisper.

“Is it for her that you neglect the Chamber?” asked Baron de Nucingen in

his German accent.

“Ah! the princess is one of the most dangerous women a man can have

anything to do with. I owe to her the miseries of my marriage,”

exclaimed the Marquis d’Esgrignon.

“Dangerous?” said Madame d’Espard. “Don’t speak so of my nearest friend.

I have never seen or known anything in the princess that did not seem to

come from the noblest sentiments.”

“Let the marquis say what he thinks,” cried Rastignac. “When a man has

been thrown by a fine horse he thinks it has vices and he sells it.”

Piqued by these words, the Marquis d’Esgrignon looked at d’Arthez and

said:--

“Monsieur is not, I trust, on such terms with the princess that we

cannot speak freely of her?”

D’Arthez kept silence. D’Esgrignon, who was not wanting in cleverness,

replied to Rastignac’s speech with an apologetic portrait of the

princess, which put the whole table in good humor. As the jest was

extremely obscure to d’Arthez he leaned towards his neighbor, Madame de

Montcornet, and asked her, in a whisper, what it meant.

“Excepting yourself--judging by the excellent opinion you seem to have

of the princess--all the other guests are said to have been in her good

graces.”

“I can assure you that such an accusation is absolutely false,” said

Daniel.

“And yet, here is Monsieur d’Esgrignon of an old family of Alencon, who

completely ruined himself for her some twelve years ago, and, if all is

true, came very near going to the scaffold.”

“I know the particulars of that affair,” said d’Arthez. “Madame de

Cadignan went to Alencon to save Monsieur d’Esgrignon from a trial

before the court of assizes; and this is how he rewards her to-day!”

Madame de Montcornet looked at d’Arthez with a surprise and curiosity

that were almost stupid, then she turned her eyes on Madame d’Espard

with a look which seemed to say: “He is bewitched!”

During this short conversation Madame de Cadignan was protected by

Madame d’Espard, whose protection was like that of the lightning-rod

which draws the flash. When d’Arthez returned to the general

conversation Maxime de Trailles was saying:--

“With Diane, depravity is not an effect but a cause; perhaps she owes

that cause to her exquisite nature; she doesn’t invent, she makes no

effort, she offers you the choicest refinements as the inspiration of

a spontaneous and naive love; and it is absolutely impossible not to

believe her.”

This speech, which seemed to have been prepared for a man of d’Arthez’s

stamp, was so tremendous an arraignment that the company appeared to

accept it as a conclusion. No one said more; the princess was crushed.

D’Arthez looked straight at de Trailles and then at d’Esgrignon with a

sarcastic air, and said:--

“The greatest fault of that woman is that she has followed in the wake

of men. She squanders patrimonies as they do; she drives her lovers to

usurers; she pockets ‘dots’; she ruins orphans; she inspires, possibly

she commits, crimes, but--”

Never had the two men, whom d’Arthez was chiefly addressing, listened

to such plain talk. At that BUT the whole table was startled, every one

paused, fork in air, their eyes fixed alternately on the brave author

and on the assailants of the princess, awaiting the conclusion of that

horrible silence.

“_But_,” said d’Arthez, with sarcastic airiness, “Madame la Princesse

de Cadignan has one advantage over men: when they have put themselves in

danger for her sake, she saves them, and says no harm of any one. Among

the multitude, why shouldn’t there be one woman who amuses herself with

men as men amuse themselves with women? Why not allow the fair sex to

take, from time to time, its revenge?”

“Genius is stronger than wit,” said Blondet to Nathan.

This broadside of sarcasms was in fact the discharge of a battery of

cannons against a platoon of musketry. When coffee was served, Blondet

and Nathan went up to d’Arthez with an eagerness no one else dared to

imitate, so unable were the rest of the company to show the admiration

his conduct inspired from the fear of making two powerful enemies.

“This is not the first time we have seen that your character equals your

talent in grandeur,” said Blondet. “You behaved just now more like a

demi-god than a man. Not to have been carried away by your heart or

your imagination, not to have taken up the defence of a beloved woman--a

fault they were enticing you to commit, because it would have given

those men of society eaten up with jealousy of your literary fame a

triumph over you--ah! give me leave to say you have attained the height

of private statesmanship.”

“Yes, you are a statesman,” said Nathan. “It is as clever as it is

difficult to avenge a woman without defending her.”

“The princess is one of those heroines of the legitimist party, and

it is the duty of all men of honor to protect her quand meme,” replied

d’Arthez, coldly. “What she has done for the cause of her masters would

excuse all follies.”

“He keeps his own counsel!” said Nathan to Blondet.

“Precisely as if the princess were worth it,” said Rastignac, joining

the other two.

D’Arthez went to the princess, who was awaiting him with the keenest

anxiety. The result of this experiment, which Diane had herself brought

about, might be fatal to her. For the first time in her life this woman

suffered in her heart. She knew not what she should do in case d’Arthez

believed the world which spoke the truth, instead of believing her who

lied; for never had so noble a nature, so complete a man, a soul so

pure, a conscience so ingenuous come beneath her hand. Though she had

told him cruel lies she was driven to do so by the desire of knowing a

true love. That love--she felt it dawning in her heart; yes, she loved

d’Arthez; and now she was condemned forever to deceive him! She must

henceforth remain to him the actress who had played that comedy to blind

his eyes.

When she heard Daniel’s step in the dining-room a violent commotion, a

shudder which reached to her very vitals came over her. That convulsion,

never felt during all the years of her adventurous existence, told her

that she had staked her happiness on this issue. Her eyes, gazing

into space, took in the whole of d’Arthez’s person; their light poured

through his flesh, she read his soul; suspicion had not so much as

touched him with its bat’s-wing. The terrible emotion of that fear then

came to its reaction; joy almost stifled her; for there is no human

being who is not more able to endure grief than to bear extreme

felicity.

“Daniel, they have calumniated me, and you have avenged me!” she cried,

rising, and opening her arms to him.

In the profound amazement caused by these words, the roots of which were

utterly unknown to him, Daniel allowed his hand to be taken between her

beautiful hands, as the princess kissed him sacredly on the forehead.

“But,” he said, “how could you know--”

“Oh! illustrious ninny! do you not see that I love you fondly?”

Since that day nothing has been said of the Princess de Cadignan, nor

of d’Arthez. The princess has inherited some fortune from her mother and

she spends all her summers in a villa on the lake of Geneva, where the

great writer joins her. She returns to Paris for a few months in winter.

D’Arthez is never seen except in the Chamber. His writings are becoming

exceedingly rare. Is this a conclusion? Yes, for people of sense; no,

for persons who want to know everything.

ADDENDUM

The following personages appear in other stories of the Human Comedy.

Ajuda-Pinto, Marquis Miguel d’

Father Goriot

Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life

Beatrix

Arthez, Daniel d’

A Distinguished Provincial at Paris

Letters of Two Brides

The Member for Arcis

Bianchon, Horace

Father Goriot

The Atheist’s Mass

Cesar Birotteau

The Commission in Lunacy

Lost Illusions

A Distinguished Provincial at Paris

A Bachelor’s Establishment

The Government Clerks

Pierrette

A Study of Woman

Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life

Honorine

The Seamy Side of History

The Magic Skin

A Second Home

A Prince of Bohemia

Letters of Two Brides

The Muse of the Department

The Imaginary Mistress

The Middle Classes

Cousin Betty

The Country Parson

In addition, M. Bianchon narrated the following:

Another Study of Woman

La Grande Breteche

Blondet, Emile

Jealousies of a Country Town

A Distinguished Provincial at Paris

Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life

Modeste Mignon

Another Study of Woman

A Daughter of Eve

The Firm of Nucingen

The Peasantry

Blondet, Virginie

Jealousies of a Country Town

The Peasantry

A Distinguished Provincial at Paris

Another Study of Woman

The Member for Arcis

A Daughter of Eve

Cadignan, Prince de

Modeste Mignon

Chrestien, Michel

A Bachelor’s Establishment

A Distinguished Provincial at Paris

Cinq-Cygne, Laurence, Comtesse (afterwards Marquise de)

The Gondreville Mystery

The Seamy Side of History

The Member for Arcis

Dudley, Lady Arabella

The Lily of the Valley

The Ball at Sceaux

The Magic Skin

A Daughter of Eve

Letters of Two Brides

Esgrignon, Victurnien, Comte (then Marquis d’)

Jealousies of a Country Town

Letters of Two Brides

A Man of Business

Cousin Betty

Espard, Chevalier d’

The Commission in Lunacy

Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life

Espard, Jeanne-Clementine-Athenais de Blamont-Chauvry, Marquise d’

The Commission in Lunacy

A Distinguished Provincial at Paris

Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life

Letters of Two Brides

Another Study of Woman

The Gondreville Mystery

A Daughter of Eve

Beatrix

Galathionne, Prince and Princess (both not in each story)

The Middle Classes

Father Goriot

A Distinguished Provincial at Paris

A Daughter of Eve

Beatrix

Giraud, Leon

A Distinguished Provincial at Paris

A Bachelor’s Establishment

The Unconscious Humorists

Marsay, Henri de

The Thirteen

The Unconscious Humorists

Another Study of Woman

The Lily of the Valley

Father Goriot

Jealousies of a Country Town

Ursule Mirouet

A Marriage Settlement

Lost Illusions

A Distinguished Provincial at Paris

Letters of Two Brides

The Ball at Sceaux

Modest Mignon

The Gondreville Mystery

A Daughter of Eve

Maufrigneuse, Duc de

A Start in Life

A Bachelor’s Establishment

Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life

Maufrigneuse, Duchesse de

Modeste Mignon

Jealousies of a Country Town

The Muse of the Department

Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life

Letters of Two Brides

Another Study of Woman

The Gondreville Mystery

The Member for Arcis

Maufrigneuse, Georges de

The Gondreville Mystery

Beatrix

The Member for Arcis

Mirbel, Madame de

Letters of Two Brides

Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life

Nathan, Raoul

Lost Illusions

A Distinguished Provincial at Paris

Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life

A Daughter of Eve

Letters of Two Brides

The Seamy Side of History

The Muse of the Department

A Prince of Bohemia

A Man of Business

The Unconscious Humorists

Navarreins, Duc de

A Bachelor’s Establishment

Colonel Chabert

The Muse of the Department

The Thirteen

Jealousies of a Country Town

The Peasantry

Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life

The Country Parson

The Magic Skin

The Gondreville Mystery

Cousin Betty

Nucingen, Baron Frederic de

The Firm of Nucingen

Father Goriot

Pierrette

Cesar Birotteau

Lost Illusions

A Distinguished Provincial at Paris

Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life

Another Study of Woman

A Man of Business

Cousin Betty

The Muse of the Department

The Unconscious Humorists

Rastignac, Eugene de

Father Goriot

A Distinguished Provincial at Paris

Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life

The Ball at Sceaux

The Interdiction

A Study of Woman

Another Study of Woman

The Magic Skin

A Daughter of Eve

The Gondreville Mystery

The Firm of Nucingen

Cousin Betty

The Member for Arcis

The Unconscious Humorists

Rochefide, Marquise de

Beatrix

A Daughter of Eve

Sarrasine

A Prince of Bohemia

Tillet, Ferdinand du

Cesar Birotteau

The Firm of Nucingen

The Middle Classes

A Bachelor’s Establishment

Pierrette

Melmoth Reconciled

A Distinguished Provincial at Paris

A Daughter of Eve

The Member for Arcis

Cousin Betty

The Unconscious Humorists

Toby (Joby, Paddy)

The Firm of Nucingen

Trailles, Comte Maxime de

Cesar Birotteau

Father Goriot

Gobseck

Ursule Mirouet

A Man of Business

The Member for Arcis

Cousin Betty

The Member for Arcis

Beatrix

The Unconscious Humorists

Vandenesse, Comte Felix de

The Lily of the Valley

Lost Illusions

A Distinguished Provincial at Paris

Cesar Birotteau

Letters of Two Brides

A Start in Life

The Marriage Settlement

Another Study of Woman

The Gondreville Mystery

A Daughter of Eve